Malaysia's 'Kongsi Raya': Celebrating togetherness

Malaysia's 'Kongsi Raya': Celebrating togetherness

By Lim Pui Huen

The concept of Bangsa Malaysia gives Malaysians a new vision for
the future.

No matter what the astrologers and feng shui masters say, most
Malaysians feel that the Year of the Rat will be an auspicious
one. By the fortuitous conjunction of the stars, Chinese New
Year fell one day ahead of Hari Raya Idul Fitri. This coincidence
of the most important annual festival of the two major races,
they feel, can only augur well for the year ahead.

For the month of February and some time after, Malaysia was
floating in an euphoria of muhibbah (goodwill). The double
celebrations have produced a whole plethora of public symbols of
goodwill and racial harmony as had never been seen before. Never
before had goodwill been so openly expressed. Never before had
racial harmony been so widely imprinted on the public awareness
on a nationwide scale.

This phenomenon was a spontaneous response to what is,
strictly speaking, a mere coincidence of the Moslem and Chinese
calendars. Business organizations that normally send greetings to
their Malay or Chinese clients at the appropriate festival, sent
joint greetings in newspapers and on television. Government
offices that generally only put up Hari Raya decorations on their
buildings, put up Chinese New Year decorations also. Similarly,
many Chinese shops and restaurants that usually only hang up
Chinese decorations, hung up Hari Raya decorations.

These joint celebrations have produced an outburst of creative
synergy as designers endeavored to capture the double celebration
concept. These efforts at cross-cultural expression could be seen
in hotels, shopping centers and public spaces all over Malaysia.
The message of goodwill was also carried through television
commercials, the most outstanding of which was the short feature
called "Drums" commissioned by Marlboro. Through the use of music
and dance, and a cast of hundreds, it vividly portrayed the
spirit of cooperation between two vibrant cultures. A popular
catchphrase Kongsi Raya was coined by combining the traditional
greetings of gongxi facai and Selamat Hari Raya.

Many organizations and offices, including the Prime Minister's
Department, held parties celebrating the double festivals. At the
reception jointly hosted by the Malay Chamber of Commerce and the
Association of Chinese Chambers of Commerce, Malaysia, Prime
Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad commented on the growing trust and
understanding between Malays and Chinese which have produced a
climate conducive to Sino-Malay cooperation.

The forces of globalization which have pushed countries
towards closer economic integration have similarly given Malays
and Chinese greater impetus to work together to keep Malaysia
competitive. These efforts have paid off as Malaysia registered a
9.6 percent growth in GDP in 1995, thus maintaining the strong
growth momentum of the last seven years. The growing pie has
brought a share for everyone despite criticisms leveled at
weaknesses in the distributive system.

The mood of kongsi raya is, therefore, based on the buoyant
economy that Malaysia is currently enjoying. More importantly,
however, the country has for the first time been given a
vision of the future to which all Malaysians can subscribe.

This goal for the nation was first unveiled in February 1991,
in a speech Dr. Mahathir delivered to the Malaysian Business
Council. The speech, called Malaysia: The Way Forward, aims at
advancing Malaysia to a fully developed country by 2020. However,
it has since been popularly referred to as Vision 2020. Possibly
because the speech was delivered before a business audience,
Vision 2020 was defined in economic terms. In many ways, it was a
restatement of Dr. Mahathir's key strategies of liberalization,
deregulation, privatization, diversification and human resource
development.

To ordinary Malaysian, however, Dr. Mahathir also offered a
vision of the kind of society Malaysia can aspire to be, one that
is: united, confident, democratic, moral and ethical, tolerant,
forward looking, caring, economically just, and prosperous.

Above all, Dr. Mahathir articulated a vision of a "united
Malaysian nation with a sense of common and shared destiny", to
be made up of one Bangsa Malaysia (Malaysian race).

Surprisingly, while Vision 2020 is regularly invoked, the
notion of Bangsa Malaysia seemed to have been overlooked until
August 1995, when Tan Sri Ghazali Shafie took up the topic in a
paper presented at the Institute of Islamic Understanding,
Malaysia. Ghazali, whose views have been influential in shaping
the concept of the Malaysian nation, pointed to the political,
legal and constitutional implications of the idea.

This brought a clarification from Dr. Mahathir. Bangsa
Malaysia, he explained, "means people who are able to identify
themselves with the country, speak Bahasa Malaysia, and
accept the Constitution." Malaysians should accept each other as
they are regardless of race and religion. Since then, Tengku
Razaleigh Hamzah, the president of opposition party Semangat 46,
has labeled the concept dangerous and vague.

Tengku Razaleigh's remarks illustrate that maintaining
harmonious ethnic relations is an intricate process that requires
constant nurturing. While ethnic problems are often discussed in
terms of relations between Malays and Chinese, Malaysia is much
more diverse than is generally realized. Besides the main
groupings of Malay, Chinese and Indian, the 1991 census
identifies 37 other categories of indigenous people. These
categories may still be considered conservative following a
report that there are some 83 ethnic groups in Sabah alone. Each
of these groupings have their own set of issues which have to be
handled in the light of their specific problems and needs as well
as the larger national context.

In propounding a vision of the future with which all
communities can identify, Dr. Mahathir has given Malaysians a
common sense of purpose which they did not have before. In doing
so, his stature has risen from that of politician to that of a
statesman and visionary.

P. Lim Pui Huen is a Research Fellow at the Institute of
Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore and is Associate Editor of
Trends.